The present invention is directed to an apparatus employed to clean, deburr, and dry manufactured metal parts on a production line basis and is especially concerned with deburring of parts such as engine crank shafts, cam shafts, vehicle axles, etc. which have an established axis of rotation.
Prior art approaches to cleaning of manufactured metal parts typically involve either the conveying of the parts through a spray booth past a battery of nozzles which spray cleaning fluid onto the parts or by immersing the parts in a tank of cleaning solution. In some cases, to increase the volume of parts passing through the cleaning system, tote boxes filled with parts are conveyed through a booth in which the tote boxes are flooded or overfilled with cleaning solution or the entire tote box is immersed in a tank of cleaning solution in which either or both of the bath and tote box are agitated.
In general the prior art approaches all require large volumes of cleaning fluid and require a difficult compromise between thoroughness of cleaning (all surfaces equally) and production output rate. Systems which employ tote boxes filled with loose parts obviously are not acceptable for cleaning parts having machined surfaces, particularly if the tote box is to be flooded with cleaning fluid and then tilted or inverted to drain the box or if the box is to be agitated in a bath of cleaning fluid.
The present invention is especially directed to a part cleaning, deburring, and drying system in which manufactured parts having an established axis of rotation, such as engine crank shafts, for example, may be thoroughly cleaned, deburred and dried individually on a production line basis.